Let's face it, the world is getting smaller and smaller by the second. And I'm not talking about the mindless, senseless eradication of the worlds natural habitats that force wildlife out of their surroundings in order to build subdivisions (that's another blog all together, maybe even a hefty novella). No, I'm talking about technology of course. First we had email, IM, chat rooms, web cams and picture phones to stay closer to our friends and family. Then Larry Page and Sergey Brin made it possible for us to 'Google' our long lost friends, schoolmates, college roommates, etc. What would be next? Well leave it another IV leaguer, Mark Zuckerberg, to bring us FaceBook.com.

Wow, what a concept, bringing social networking to the web. And there's no curiosity as to the immediate and vast propagation of the site. A friend registers, tells their friends, and their friends tell their friends, and so on and so on (sorry, couldn't resist). For most, including myself, it's been a treat catching up with forgotten friends, seeing their growing families, the names of their pets, what they ended up doing for a living, where they live, where they're going for the weekend, etc. In fact to some, FaceBook has almost become an obsession. Being a geek, a desperate friend anxiously needed me to come by to fix their internet connection just so she could get back on FaceBook. Geez. At least she could again see that I’m now bald, drive a Jeep, have a beagle, am getting married soon, still live in Richmond, and of course see all of my other friends.

Sure, FaceBook is dealing with some legal issues but has also become quite profitable through advertising on the site. It took me a while to notice but yes, if you look to the right after logging in you can see the latest movie release, how to be healthier, etc.

Being a web developer, God knows I wish I would've come up with the concept, darnit. Hindsight is 20/20 and I’ve yet to find a friend on FaceBook who became an optometrist. If anything, remember this:

“It’s a small world, but I’d hate to paint it.” -Steven Wright

Okay, can someone tell me who died and mandated that the word 'phenomenal' be used to describe almost everything in life these days? I mean really, if you stop and take a look around, from coffee shop conversations to press, TV and film, you'll realize that the word has taken off like gangbusters here lately like some plaugue for the vocabulary challenged. Merian Webster defines 'phenomenal' as: : relating to or being a phenomenon: as a: known through the senses rather than through thought or intuition b: concerned with phenomena rather than with hypotheses c: extraordinary , remarkable. And according to M-W, synonyms for phenomenal include: aberrant, abnormal, atypical, extraordinary, freak, odd, peculiar, rare, singular, uncommon, uncustomary, unique, unusual, unwonted.

So, can a bite of cheesecake really be phenomenal? Or a new kind of exercise workout or a child learning to walk at an early age or the way new tires hug the road better actually BE phenomenal? Try it for a day and see how many times this increasingly over and misused adjective is employed to describe sometimes the most mundane things. Just don't let it give you a twitch everytime you hear it like it does to me. Sure, the word is fun to say, but so is amazing, fantastic, yummy, neato, dynomite, really bitchin', cool, worthwhile, not too shabby, fun, exciting, exceptional, swell, rockin', sweet, delightful, right on time, peculiar, interesting, intrinsic, far out, absurd, bizarre, crazy, fanciful, foolish, insane, nonsensical, preposterous...